batch importing metadata from an Excel file

Hi all,

I have a project which involves adding metadata from a supplied .xls file to a series of .pdfs.  Obviously this can be done manually, but this project involves thousands of files.  I know that this is possible via scripting in Bridge, but I have very little experience with JavaScripting.   My skills are mostly limited to cribbing scripts I have found on the web and trying to adjust them to suit my needs.  So far I have not been successful.   My understanding is that exporting the .xls file as a tab delimited text file would be the best option seeing as how some of the fields use commas.  There are 5 metadata fields in all.  3 of them are standard fields (filename, title, author/creator) and 2 of them are custom fields (degree year, publisher).  It's the custom fields that I'm having the most trouble with.  Anyone have any thoughts or advice?  Thanks.